page_title: Joseph Urbania
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Urbania / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Carved Maple-wood figure of Jesus Christ ascending into heaven. 38" x 38"; as seen in 1945.
context_page_description: Joseph Urbania was a 20th Century Slovene Sculptor, who lived and worked in Austria for much of his life. His media was large-scale wood, stone, bronze and plaster religious sculptures for European cathedrals.
context_section_description: While living in Vienna, Urbania produced commissioned sculpture and paintings and exhibited his work there. He began to be recognized publicly for his achievements and received the Gundel Art Prize for sculpture in 1910 and the Preleuthner Prize in 1912. Urbania lived briefly in Sarajevo in 1915-1918 where, together with a team of artists, he created a monument to WWI soldiers at the Kovaci Cemetery. After the war, he relocated permanently to Vienna where he lived and worked until his death in 1943.
  Before WWI, Urbania began to produce anti-war allegory works.  His massive wood-carving The Last Battle (1905), a scene from the Russo-Japanese War, was donated to the Dežel Museum in 1906 and is now on display at the National Gallery of Slovenia.  
  Other anti-war pieces include: Hail Caesar (1915) 
  After the Battle (1908) and Hannibal at the Gates (1908). His large carved-wood relief Z Doma (or Far from Home, 1908) was a sentimental self-portrait framed in branches and leaves.
  In 1914, Urbania began but never finished the gigantic plaster figures Spring and Effort (also called Water and Electricity) for the cancelled Provincial House in Ljubljana (the plasters are currently disassembled in the National Gallery). His figure Passages of the Danube was commissioned for the Michaelerplatz, in Vienna, but was removed during WWII and is now missing.
  A devout Roman Catholic, Urbania was best known for the sculptures he created for cathedrals and monasteries. Two monumental plaster reliefs – Christ Healing and Daniel in the Lion’s Den – were later moved to the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana. Small bronze copies of these popular pieces occasionally appear for public sale.  
  Other religious-themed pieces include: a maple wood carving of Christus Ascending (1931, now in Kenosha, Wisconsin); several marble statues at the Parish Church of St. Elisabeth, including Immaculata and Two Cherubim (with sculptor Alojzij Progar); St. Hubertus (1909) and St. Anthony and Child (1934); and an important burial chapel piece called Resurrection (1910, made by the artists' group at the Grošlje Workshop for a burial chapel in Škofja Loka), sometimes credited as the sole work of Ivan Zajec.
  Other statues and reliefs include: The Carrier of the Vase (1909); Absolvo Te (1910); Rokoborca (The Wrestlers) in 1913; Danica-Zarji (1913); Sejalec (1914); Monument to the Fallen (WWI Soldiers Cemetery in Sarajevo) in 1918; a carved wood statue In Nature (Flying Left) in 1922; a marble Holy Family (1926 – now in Chicago); Turn (1930); a bronze figure Girl with Grapes and Bear (1935); and a pear wood carved Mother (Ladies with a Child) in 1939.
  Completing a portion of his work as part of an unsigned team of artists at the Grošelj Workshop in Ljubljana Urbania's contributions stand out nonetheless for the vividness of his figures, the stunning naturalism, the realism of the human body, plainly beautiful faces, idealized branches and leaves, and exaggerated emotion, which can be seen in all his subsequent work. His unsigned reliefs and statues – at St. Mohor and Fortunat Cathedral in Groblje pri Prekopi , Angels on the Great Altar in the Ljubljana Cathedral at St. Cyril and Methodius Square, and Mother of God with St. Dominic and Rosary (1906) at Loško Potok – were all created by Urbania as the lead sculptor in the Groblje pri Prekopi Workshop.
  Urbania's Christus Ascending was featured in the home of wealthy American Industrialist Oscar U. Zerk. The 1931 white maple carved work became internationally famous in 1954, when thieves broke into Zerk's Wisconsin mansion and stole more than $200,000 worth of paintings, gems and art. The thieves were captured by the FBI, and the art returned.
caption: Joseph Urbania: Christus Ascending (1931) as it appeared in the home of Oscar U. Zerk in 1945
exif: {"Image Make": "samsung", "Image Model": "SM-G930T", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "G930TUVU4BQG5", "Image DateTime": "2017:07:29 13:47:47", "Image ExifOffset": "202", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[33, 39, 3719/100]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[117, 59, 5317/100]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "1", "GPS GPSAltitude": "23399/1000", "GPS GPSTimeStamp": "[20, 47, 2]", "GPS GPSDate": "2017:07:29", "Image GPSInfo": "636", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "17/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "64", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2017:07:29 13:47:47", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2017:07:29 13:47:47", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "2953/500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "153/100", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "307/100", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "153/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "21/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1316", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1803", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "26", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}